Friday 14 September 2012 17.30 EDT
First published on Friday 14 September 2012 17.30 EDT

André Villas-Boas has moved to silence rumblings of discord between himself and Hugo Lloris but insisted that his expensive new goalkeeper's wait for a Tottenham Hotspur debut will go on.

Lloris's national team manager, Didier Deschamps, suggested last week that the France captain was already disgruntled at White Hart Lane, aghast at not being drafted straight into Tottenham's starting lineup following his £15m transfer from Lyon on deadline day. However, Villa-Boas maintains that the player "fully understands" his decision to persist with Brad Friedel, who will be preferred to Lloris again for Sunday's Premier League match at Reading.

"At the moment we feel that Brad is looking consistent and deserves to continue playing," Villas-Boas said. "That is the common-sense approach and anything else would be extremely unfair. I have had a conversation with Hugo and he fully understands this."

Villas-Boas rubbished claims that he had not been keen on signing Lloris and that the purchase had been imposed on him by the Tottenham chairman, Daniel Levy. "If the decision was not made by myself, I would not be sitting in front of you now," said Villas-Boas, who repeated his assertion that Lloris will eventually become a key player for the club – and that the goalkeeper has accepted the challenge of dislodging Friedel.

"We are extremely happy he is part of the squad. There is no doubt about his talent and his future in the club. We don't care anything about any assumptions that people who have nothing to do with Tottenham make. All we think about is Tottenham's principles and values and there is nothing in anyone's contract that says they must play in the first team, that is not how we work.

"But Hugo has no fear of competition. The first thing he said when I talked to him was: 'I want to compete and prove I'm the best.' When you hear that from a player you know that he is committed to producing his best. There are no issues whatsoever. He will 100% be in contention for the next game after Reading, by which time he will know his fellow players better."

That next game is against Lazio in the Europa League, a competition that Villas-Boas, unlike his predecessor, Harry Redknapp, intends to treat with the utmost seriousness. "We will embrace it like we would the Champions League," he said. "We want to win it and we will focus a lot on it."